Debian 12 Bookworm and 11 Bullseye for Libre Computer Boards

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61

I just downloaded and flashed Debian 12 base for Le Potato (debian-12-base-arm64+aml-s905x-cc.img.xz). I want to SSH to the board since I don’t have a keyboard and display to connect to it (so, I want to use the board in headless mode).

The board seems to start up since I see the blue LED “hearbeating” at a rate of 1Hz.

However, if I try to connect through Putty, I get a “connection refused”.

Is it possible to start up headless? Is the SSH server running by default? How to connect to it?

Best,

–Geert

62

There’s no SSH enabled by default due to security. You can connect to it via UART to configure the system first if you are headless. See Libre Computer Board Debug Serial UART Connection and Setup Guide

63

I too am waiting to see a Debian 13 (trixie) image (for LePotato and SweetPotato).

Tried many others but everything else has issues.

The Armbian images failures:

Armbian LePotato (requires SD boot mode) : only 1 USB port works

Armbian SweetPotato (requires BIOS boot mode) : fails to reboot and requires power cycle to restart.

We are still using Debian12 image and then automating the upgrade to 13/trixie.

Thanks,

64

We should have Debian 13 images with huge amount of functional updates in 10 days or so.

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65

I’ve now attatched a UART to the SBC board “Le Potato” with the following setup:

  • From the PC there’s a USB to serial DB9 male connector. Cable is from Aten, type UC232A (info can be found * here)

  • A female DB9 connector is connected to the DB9 male connector of the USB to serial cable

  • GND of SBC board is connected to pin 5 of female DB9 connector
    Pin 5 of female DB9 connector is connected to pin 5 of male connector (= GND)

  • TX of SBC board is connected to pin 2 (RXD) of female DB9 connector
    Pin 2 of female DB9 connector is connected to pin 2 of male connector (= RXD)

  • RX of SBC board is connected to pin 3 (TXD) of female DB9 connector
    Pin 3 of female DB9 connector is connected to pin 3 of male connector (= TXD)

  • Putty is used in serial mode with the following settings:

    LePotato_serial_setting
    LePotato_serial_setting452×442 9.94 KB

However, when I switch on the SBC I get rubbish on the screen like this:

LePotato_serial_garbage
LePotato_serial_garbage983×636 71.9 KB

What could cause this problem? What settings might be wrong?

Best,

–Geert

66

RS232 is not UART. RS232 is 3V to 15V and will destroy the board.

67

As Librecomputer mentioned, you are using a USB to RS232 cable. While this is a serial port, RS232 uses +/15V for the logic levels, while the aml-s905x-cc uses 3.3v logic levels for all GPIO including its UART interface. You can damage the board by supplying 15v though the RS232 adaptor, and even if you only connected RXD, it probably won’t detect anything whatsoever coming from the board, as the voltage is not large enough to reach the logic levels of the converter.

68

Did anyone try the debian 12 image with RK-3399? I’m trying the https://distro.libre.computer/ci/debian/12/debian-12-base-arm64%2Barm64.img.xz

Mine boots normally to the point of:

  Booting `Debian GNU/Linux'

Loading Linux 6.1.74-12781-g74961fb0a5d2 ...
Loading initial ramdisk ...

Then the kernel starts and overwrites the first three lines with:

EFI stub: Booting Linux Kernel...
EFI stub: Using DTB from configuration table
EFI stub: Exiting boot services...

After that the screen gets cleared and all the output goes to the first line only(?) - as if there were no newline (\n) at the end of each string. And then the board resets :thinking:

Am I using the wrong image?

UPD: power supply is definitely not an issue - I’m powering a 65W laptop from this thunderbolt docking station. SD is 512gb samsung pro plus (A2 / V30) from amazon - from the list of the recommended sd cards..

UPD2: ok, apparently the thunderbolt connection is causing this :joy: - the board boots fine with the ‘regular’ usb-c power supply from the same dock

Thanks.

69

Any update on this, btw? Thanks

70

This was posted over 3 months ago, I don’t think there will ever be an update. seems like they don’t care about their customers to be honest. I need debian 13 for a project i was wanting to do with my le potato but it seems that i wont be able to do it for now.

1 Like
71

@miguelagve : I’ve already bought the correct USB-to-TTL converters and all is working fine now. And I didn’t blow up any boards I tortured, luckily…

1 Like